Gamers Rejoice! Marathon Rubicon Release Date Announced

By TMO Staff

Mar 14th, 2001 3:00 PM EST

After great hype and years in the making, the new Marathon addition, Rubicon, will be available to the public this Friday. Rubicon, a massive scenario built around Bungieis Marathon, includes hundreds of new levels, weapons, and characters. According to the Marathon Rubicon team:

The highly-regarded Marathon Trilogy by Bungie Software has long held a near and dear place close to the heart of every mac gamer. With its complicated story and timeless gameplay, Marathonis laurels are much deserved. Over the course of the six years since Marathon 1 was released, the gameis fans have worked long and hard on countless efforts to extend the life of the game beyond what came in the box. Teams of artists, mapmakers, sound gurus, and others joined to create masterful scenarios and total conversions for the Marathon engine, hacking together their own tools for modifying the original games.

With the advent of Marathon Infinity, Bungieis comprehensive content-creation tools for the engine were released. Scenario makers everywhere rejoiced, and highly motivated artists began constructing custom scenarios of scales that eclipsed even Bungieis original games.

Enter Rubicon.

Four years in the making, Rubicon is the is the largest Marathon scenario project ever created. To give some sense of the magnitude of this scenario, Rubicon features:

360+ new textures

Over a dozen new characters

Tons of new scenery

8 new weapons

More solo levels than any other Marathon scenario to date

This is all wrapped into a nonlinear plotline that can be traversed in any number of ways, featuring different endings based upon a playeris choices over the course of the game. Randy Reddig, the texture artist and a mapmaker for Bungieis original Marathon Infinity, called Rubiconis visuals "...the nicest Iive ever seen come out of Marathon." If youive ever played any Marathon game, Rubicon will reignite your love for the series.

Rubicon will be available for free this Friday. You can find more information at the Marathon Rubicon Web site.